


Under His Wings

by everhutcher



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels, Depression, F/M, Guardian Angels, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 17:09:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7061890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everhutcher/pseuds/everhutcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katniss Everdeen didn't even know him, but Peeta Mellark would move Heaven and Earth to complete his mission. Originally posted on Tumblr for District 12 Drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under His Wings

**Author's Note:**

> The Hunger Games and all related characters are the property of Suzanne Collins.

She peered at the frigid rush of water below, her thoughts speeding along as swiftly as the floes of ice along the river’s surface.

She couldn’t do it anymore. Not when her sister, the light in her life, was gone.

She was so tired.

She swung one leg over the iron railing, straddling it in one last moment of contemplation.

She wanted nothing more than to be with Prim again, if there even was such a possibility. She’d never really been one to believe in Heaven; her father’s untimely death ten years ago had done much to nail that notion into place. But if there was an afterlife, surely it would be better to be there with Prim, than here, without her.

A nearby shout, almost inaudible above the roar of the rapids but caught by her hunter’s ear, gave her pause.

She looked below. Someone was bobbing up and down among the arctic ripples, head just breaking the surface. He was undoubtedly taking in a lot of water as he repeated his frantic cries for help.

He was drowning.

Katniss pivoted over the railing fully, and threw herself into the water with him.

Needles of cold stung her through every inch of her wool coat and trousers as she plunged into the river, but it took only a second to recover from the disorientation before a flash of blond hair caught her eye under the surface. Katniss made her way over to him – she saw now that it was a young man about her age – and she grabbed onto the collar of his parka.

She willed herself to push to the surface, realizing much too late that her heavy clothes might sink her, along with the man. Fatigue began to set in to replace the adrenaline rush which had fueled her until now.

Katniss fought the urge to give up. She couldn’t let go now. Not when he needed her.

* * *

  
“Miss Everdeen?”

Katniss turned her gaze away from the window toward the doorway and a voice that was vaguely familiar. Her eyes widened as she took in a white hospital gown like her own, and a thick wave of blond hair.

“It’s… you.” She searched her mind for something more to say, but was at a loss.

“I’m Peeta. Peeta Mellark. I don’t think we were ever formally introduced, though maybe we were and I was just too unconscious to know it,” he replied with wry amusement. His deep blue eyes twinkled as he came forward and held out his hand. As Katniss took it, she felt a rush of warmth flow up her arm and spread through her entire body.

“Peeta.” She liked the way the name felt on her tongue, and the way he smiled as she said it.

“The doctors wouldn’t tell me how you were doing, but… I figured I might just find out for myself, so I could start thinking of a way to thank the woman who saved my – I mean, saved me.”

She was never one to like attention so Katniss shrugged uncomfortably at the warm gratitude she found in his deep blue eyes. But she knew to at least be polite. “You’re welcome.”

“May I sit with you?” he asked.

She gestured for him to take a seat, surprised but not unpleasantly so when he perched himself on the edge of her bed instead of the chair next to it. He continued to hold her hand, and she didn’t mind it.

Peeta looked lost in thought for a moment, as if he were deciding what to say next.

“At the risk of putting my nose in someone’s business… I know I ended up in the water out of pure stupidity, walking much too close to some very slippery rocks on the edge of that river. But… I also saw you on the railing before I ended up in there.”

Katniss held her breath, waiting for what she knew was probably coming next.

“Were you going to jump, Katniss?”

Katniss nodded tightly, afraid if she opened her mouth she might say more than she meant to reveal. This man was a virtual stranger to her and regardless of the extraordinary circumstances under which they’d met, he had no idea about the pain she was experiencing.

“Well I suppose that was a real stroke of luck, if you ask me. Looks a little like we protected each other today.”

Katniss nodded again, unable to sort the jumbled thoughts in her mind. In a way, he was right. He’d protected her from herself, from her runaway thoughts, her depression. Protected her from making a choice that would have destroyed her mother, her friends, Gale and Madge… their children, whose joyful yells of “Auntie Kat” made her about as close as Katniss thought she’d ever be to wanting kids of her own.

“Don’t do it, Katniss. Not ever again. Please.”

Katniss was pulled out of her thoughts by the intensity in his voice. Like magnets, her gaze was drawn to his. Peeta said nothing else, but he didn’t need to do so. She could see and feel the earnestness coming off him.

Peeta nodded as if satisfied by the answer her eyes gave him.  As he got up to leave, he left her with one last request. “If you ever feel that way again, will you talk with me first?”

She didn’t understand why, but she nodded in agreement, before a thought occurred to her. “How will I find you?”

“You just will, I think, when the time is right. Will you allow it?”

“I’ll allow it.”

* * *

  
“I know you’re new to all this, but you do realize that there are more subtle ways to get your case’s attention.”

They were on the bridge, Haymitch having found Peeta there, peering absentmindedly into the water, contemplating the events of the previous day. His question brought Peeta out of his stupor as he whirled around on the older man with wide eyes.

“And risk her jumping anyway?” Peeta replied incredulously. “You and I both know once that happens I’m not allowed to do anything. If she jumped, she needed a reason to live. I just gave her a little nudge, is all.”

“Well, looks like I’ve got a pair of fighters now, don’t I? Let’s hope she remembers that and doesn’t try something like this again.”

Peeta nodded, seemingly satisfied with his mentor’s indirect approval. Haymitch held up a finger in warning, though. “That girl isn’t supposed to die just yet. But you haven’t gotten your wings yet, either Peeta. There’s more work to be done where she’s concerned.”

“She doesn’t know the effect she can have.”

“Every case is special. That’s the whole point of the work we do.”

“I know, Haymitch. But she… I can’t explain it. Even if I never got my wings, I’m still glad I was able to save her.”

“And that’s why they picked you, Peeta. Because you’ll think of your case before your own needs. You’re exactly what we need for this kind of work.”

* * *

  
Gale and Madge hadn’t been fooled by the official account of events at the river. They made Katniss promise to get help. While talking to a professional clearly helped a lot of people, Katniss had never been good with words, and found herself feeling even more frustrated and voiceless after her first session. She trudged along the slushy sidewalk in the center of town at her lowest point in weeks. Her head hanging down, she thought for the smallest moment that she could easily make her way over to the bridge and try again.

“Ooooof!”  Katniss grunted as she collided with a broad, warm body.  She stepped back in embarrassment as she made ready to apologize, but stopped short when she peered up into the familiar blue eyes of Peeta Mellark.

* * *

Peeta’s company always seemed to come when Katniss least expected it and most needed it. A chance encounter found him spending one morning with her at the local coffee shop as Katniss struggled to stay awake after a sleepless night. Another happened outside the bank just after Katniss withdrew the money for the last of Prim’s funeral expenses. One night it was at Sae’s diner; Katniss left the house when she could no longer take her mother’s listless responses and found herself with an unexpected but not unwelcome dinner companion.

They never made plans but they never seemed to need to do so. Peeta always seemed to be there the moment when she needed someone and knew just what she needed in that moment. Sometimes it was a laugh as a distraction from the pain. Sometimes it was just a quiet companion on a walk. Occasionally, a hand to hold.

Over the weeks, the hand-holding became habit.

One night, Katniss awoke panicked from a nightmare about Prim when it vaguely registered that someone was pounding on her door.

She shuffled her way downstairs, dreading what she might find. The last time someone had pounded like that in the dead of night, it was the police, coming to deliver the awful news about Prim.

Instead, she found Peeta. Without a second thought, she flung her arms around him, clutching onto his steady warmth like a lifeline. She was the one drowning now, and he was the one doing the saving.

She never questioned why Peeta was taking a walk at three in the morning, or how he happened to be near her house when she needed him most.

But he wasn’t just there for her pain, either. Over time, there was laughter, and lots of it. Katniss discovered a new sensation: her cheeks hurt from the wide smiles that Peeta’s self-deprecating and slightly sarcastic humor brought her. After having to be the adult in the family for so many years, Katniss finally felt like she could let go a little around Peeta. She could find a few bits of the old Katniss, the one not driven the despair at the loss of her beloved father and sister. She could even think of them now and again without an instant pain in her chest.

Eventually Katniss realized she needed Peeta as much as she’d ever allowed herself to need anybody. And he wasn’t just filling the space that Prim’s loss had left in her heart. It came to her one day as the snow was just starting to melt in the meadow near her house. The first small signs of spring were making their presence known. The sun finally felt warm on her face as she closed her eyes, inhaling a deep breath of air as she walked.

As she opened her eyes, she saw the first small yellow dandelion pushing its way out of the nearly-frozen ground beneath her feet. A sign that winter was over.

That life could go on.

That it could be good again.

Peeta had given her that.

In the lowest moment of her life, she’d jumped into the water to save Peeta. But now she realized the truth in the words he’d uttered beside her hospital bed. She’d saved him, and in that moment, he’d saved her too.

She wanted him to stay with her, always. And she planned to tell him so.

* * *

Haymitch had been watching Peeta’s relationship with Katniss with growing trepidation. It was quickly becoming clear that Peeta’s mission to save Katniss from herself had turned into something else altogether. Peeta wasn’t just a concerned guardian anymore. He was a man in love.

A man who, technically, was no longer a man.

Peeta’s heart knew no limits, which was one of the reasons he’d been chosen in the first place. He was a perfect candidate for wings, someone who would give of himself to others, never giving up on them.

It was exactly that quality that was, in a way, backfiring on him now. Peeta had allowed himself not just to love, which was required in this line of work, but to fall in love. That was something else entirely.

And Haymitch was going to have to do something about it.

* * *

“I have good news, boy. You’ve done it.”

Peeta handed Haymitch a cup of coffee as he sat down on the bench beside his mentor and took a sip from his own. His brow furrowed before he finally spoke.

“But… she still has nightmares.”

Haymitch chuckled. “Perfectionist, are you? Son, you’re not going to ever will those away completely. Congratulate yourself. She’s going to be fine and you’re getting your wings.”

Peeta’s train of thought wouldn’t be derailed though. “They go away when I’m with her.”

Haymitch rolled his eyes. “So, what? Do you plan to always be with her? How would that relationship work? She might notice when she’s old and gray and you haven’t aged a day.”

Peeta blanched, but nodded, and Haymitch smiled inwardly as he saw the younger man trying to cover up his dismay. Peeta had integrity; he knew he should be happy at this news and was trying so hard to do the right thing. After a pause, the younger man set his lips in a hard line of determination. “Can I at least say goodbye?”

“Afraid not. You know this is how it works. A guardian-in-training gets his wings and moves on to the next mission. And the next. And the next.”  
Peeta nodded glumly. He knew. He just didn’t know it would be this hard. That he would care this much. How did other guardians do it? How did they just move on?

“You’re different,” Haymitch continued, almost as if he’d heard Peeta. “You have a bigger capacity to love that nearly any new recruit I’ve ever mentored. And that has caught the attention of… the higher ups.”

Peeta’s clouded expression turned to one of confusion as he looked fully at Haymitch now. “How high up?”

“The very top.”

“The very top?” Peeta gulped with both fear and pride. It was almost unheard of for the very top to be concerned about a new guardian who hadn’t even earned his wings yet.

“Yep. And here’s the thing. You’ve earned them, boy, no doubt. But the big boss is willing to put another option on the table.”

* * *

Peeta Mellark had never been so thrilled to get fired.

He knew he was probably giving up the opportunity of a lifetime - scratch that, several lifetimes over - but after weighing the options he knew he could never give his heart to another case in the same way.

Katniss’s case - no, not her case, just Katniss - had taken all that his heart had to offer another being. And he’d gladly give it to her again, many times over.

But now, he only had one lifetime in which to give it. He’d given up his wings, and all the other lifetimes that would come with them. And he wanted to spend that time with her.

He knew he’d made the right decision when he found her standing in that spot again, the place where he’d first laid eyes on her so many months earlier. The despair she’d been feeling that cold night had radiated off her, palpable to Peeta’s angel heart. It had nearly broken him to see her that way.

Now, as if she knew it was him, she turned her head, and the radiance of her smile threatened to knock him to the ground.

She extended her arm and he took her hand as they both turned to look at the rush of water below. “I knew you’d find me here,” she murmured. “You always know when I need you.” Something in her tone was… different. Not in a bad way, Peeta decided. But it made him curious.

“Do you need me now, Katniss?” he replied quietly.

“Now, and always.” She stole a glance at him in that moment, breath held, waiting to see his response.

He opened his mouth to speak, but for once, Peeta Mellark had no words. He’d given up eternity for this woman without truly knowing if she’d want a life with him. That was the deal with the very top. He had to consent to a mortal life without regret. That meant accepting the possibility he’d spend his one lifetime alone. Peeta readily agreed. He was willing to just exist in the same world as Katniss. Even if she never loved him that way.

But here she was, saying the words he’d been dreaming she’d say. She wanted this as much as he did.

Peeta pulled her tightly up against him, crushing her with his embrace. “Thank you, thank you,” he murmured as he peppered her face with soft kisses. He wasn’t entirely sure if the words were meant for her, or for Haymitch (who seemed to know they needed this before he did), or if they were a prayer to the very top. Maybe all of the above.

And then, her hands were in his hair and she was kissing him back. The electricity he felt threatened to overwhelm his senses as her lips grazed his softly, seeking permission to love him. How could she not know his feelings by now? He wondered. He opened his mouth to deepen the kiss, lost in her, and she in him.

Limited time on this earth? Not in this moment. Time stood still.

No wings? He was soaring without them.

They held onto one another tightly. Compared to some beings in this universe, their life together wouldn’t be a very long one. But Peeta knew he would spend every moment of the rest of his life with Katniss Everdeen.


End file.
